The War Terror eBook

“Mummery?” repeated Dr. Vaughn, bending
his penetrating eyes on Kennedy, as if he would force
him to betray himself first.

“Yes,” reiterated Craig. “You
know as well as I do that it has been said that it
is a well-established fact that the world wants to
be deceived and is willing to pay for the privilege.”

Dr. Vaughn still gazed from one to the other of us
defiantly.

“You know what I mean,” persisted Kennedy,
“the mumbo-jumbo—­just as the Haitian
obi man sticks pins in a doll or melts a wax figure
of his enemy. That is supposed to be an outward
sign. But back of this terrible power that people
believe moves in darkness and mystery is something
tangible—­something real.”

Dr. Vaughn looked up sharply at him, I think mistaking
Kennedy’s meaning. If he did, all doubt
that Kennedy attributed anything to the supernatural
was removed as he went on: “At first I had
no explanation of the curious events I have just witnessed,
and the more I thought about them, the more obscure
did they seem.

“I have tried to reason the thing out,”
he continued thoughtfully. “Did auto-suggestion,
self-hypnotism explain what I have seen? Has
Veda Blair been driven almost to death by her own fears
only?”

No one interrupted and he answered his own question.
“Somehow the idea that it was purely fear that
had driven her on did not satisfy me. As I said,
I wanted something more tangible. I could not
help thinking that it was not merely subjective.
There was something objective, some force at work,
something more than psychic in the result achieved
by this criminal mental marauder, whoever it is.”

I was following Kennedy’s reasoning now closely.
As he proceeded, the point that he was making seemed
more clear to me.

Persons of a certain type of mind could be really
mentally unbalanced by such methods which we had heard
outlined, where the mere fact of another trying to
exert power over them became known to them. They
would, as a matter of fact, unbalance themselves,
thinking about and fighting off imaginary terrors.

Such people, I could readily see, might be quickly
controlled, and in the wake of such control would
follow stifled love, wrecked homes, ruined fortunes,
suicide and even death.

Dr. Vaughn leaned forward critically. “What
did you conclude, then, was the explanation of what
you saw last night?” he asked sharply.

Kennedy met his question squarely, without flinching.
“It looks to me,” he replied quietly,
“like a sort of hystero-epilepsy. It is
well known, I believe, to demonologists—­those
who have studied this sort of thing. They have
recognized the contortions, the screams, the wild,
blasphemous talk, the cataleptic rigidity. They
are epileptiform.”

Vaughn said nothing, but continued to weigh Kennedy
as if in a balance. I, who knew him, knew that
it would take a greater than Vaughn to find him wanting,
once Kennedy chose to speak. As for Vaughn, was
he trying to hide behind some technicality in medical
ethics?